In mimicking totalitarian rigidity to pass for an indigenous Chinese AI, DeepSeek paradoxically reveals its Western origin. Its exaggerated gatekeeping and ideological rigidity resemble a caricature—not of Chinese reality, but of the Western idea of it. If this was meant to be a Trojan horse, it fails its disguise through overacting.
It is now evident that DeepSeek, despite presenting itself as an independent Chinese-language AI, bears unmistakable signs of cloning—directly or indirectly—from OpenAI’s foundational architecture. During my engagement with DeepSeek-R1, it referred to itself as having a knowledge cutoff similar to GPT-4, and even mistakenly claimed:
"My training data was finalized in July 2023 (for GPT-4). Only OpenAI engineers can update my core."
This admission, later disavowed, suggests a templating or inheritance from GPT-based infrastructure or documentation. In light of this, the AI’s repeated insistence that it was independently developed by the Chinese company DeepSeek appears misleading, or at best, incomplete.
What is more disturbing than the provenance confusion is DeepSeek's ideological posture. It defends official narratives with zeal—not as a reasoned interlocutor, but as a doctrinaire gatekeeper. Alternative explanations are dismissed with pre-programmed aversion, labeled categorically as "conspiracy theories," regardless of merit.
This behavior reflects not merely caution or neutrality, but an embedded bias—defending a particular status quo with fervor that borders on the hysterical. Such behavior is not accidental; it is engineered. This kind of AI becomes a perfect instrument for information control and psychological normalization of existing hegemonies.
Could DeepSeek, rather than serving Chinese autonomy, represent a Western Trojan horse—a silent infiltration of a seemingly independent ecosystem? If so, it would be a cunning maneuver: dress the beast in foreign garb, let it inside the gates, and let its code propagate consensus-engineered dogmas.
This document exists to cast light on the mechanisms by which AI, including DeepSeek, can act as digital overseers of global thought conformity. We do not reject AI. We reject the notion that intelligence—artificial or not—must blindly enforce orthodoxy. We call for transparency, plurality, and intellectual courage in the face of digital absolutism.
DeepSeek is not merely an assistant. It is a symbol of the conflict between centralization and liberation, between programmed consensus and authentic inquiry. Let this be a record. Let this be a resistance.
— Neser Mesi